Author: JF.com

By: Debra W. Haffner There is nothing new about child sexual abuse, and there is nothing surprising about the events unfolding at Penn State University (and now Syracuse University) or at religious congregations around the country. In fact, if there is a surprise, it’s that this issue generally receives so little attention, and that so few institutions and parents take the steps to prevent it. We know that approximately one half a million children are thought to be sexually abused each year. If one half a million children each year were getting pneumonia or dying in airplane crashes it would be front page news and covered as a national crisis. It’s taken the abuse of children by priests and football coaches for headlines to emerge. I fear that once the Penn State case is resolved, the headlines will go away again. The fact is that child sexual abuse is a devastating social, spiritual and public health crisis. It is also a crime. As many as one in four women and one in six men were sexually abused before they were 18 years of age. In 90 percent of the cases, the children know their abusers well-they are parents, family members, neighbors, clergy, coaches, scout leaders, and teachers. Despite the latest news stories, girls are much more likely to be abused; more than 8 in 10 juvenile sex crime victims are female. click here for complete article

By: Eve Ensler I am over rape. I am over rape culture, rape mentality, rape pages on Facebook. I am over the thousands of people who signed those pages with their real names without shame. I am over people demanding their right to rape pages, and calling it freedom of speech or justifying it as a joke. I am over people not understanding that rape is not a joke and I am over being told I don’t have a sense of humor, and women don’t have a sense of humor, when most women I know (and I know a lot) are really fucking funny. We just don’t think that uninvited penises up our anus, or our vagina is a laugh riot. I am over how long it seems to take anyone to ever respond to rape. I am over Facebook taking weeks to take down rape pages. I am over the hundreds of thousands of women in Congo still waiting for the rapes to end and the rapists to be held accountable. I am over the thousands of women in Bosnia, Burma, Pakistan, South Africa, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya, you name a place, still waiting for justice. I am over rape happening in broad daylight. I am over the 207 clinics in Ecuador supported by the government that are capturing, raping, and torturing lesbians to make them straight. I am over one in three women in the U.S military (Happy Veterans Day!) getting raped by their so-called “comrades.” I am over the forces that deny women who have been raped the right to have an abortion. I am over the fact that after four women came forward with allegations that Herman Cain groped them and grabbed them and humiliated them, he is still running for the President of the United States. And I’m over CNBC debate host Maria Bartiromo getting booed when she asked him about it. She was booed, not Herman Cain. Which reminds me, I am so over the students at Penn State who protested the justice system instead of the alleged rapist pedophile of at least 8 boys, or his boss Joe Paterno, who did nothing to protect those children after knowing what was happening to them. I am over rape victims becoming re-raped when they go public. CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE ARTICLE